What is the Customer Charge?

The Customer Charge is a fixed monthly fee designed to evenly distribute the costs Danville Utilities incurs when providing electric service to customers. Examples of charges that are incurred are: meter reading, maintaining customer records, maintaining substations and power lines, and much more. In other words, whether customers use electricity or not, it costs to provide electric service to each and every customer. All customers (residential, commercial, and industrial) are charged a customer charge.

What is the Energy Charge?

Sometimes referred to as the “base rate,” the Energy Charge is the minimum amount charged per unit of consumption. For example, the Energy Charge is the cost of the consumption of electricity used to power all your electric equipment; such as your heating and cooling systems, water heating, televisions, lighting, electric motors, etc.

What is a Kilowatt-Hour?

Electricity is measured via a meter placed on the exterior of your facility in kilowatt-hour (kWh) units. A watt is a basic measure of electricity. A kilowatt is one-thousand watts. The kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy equivalent to one kilowatt (1 kW) of power used for one hour (1 h) of time. For example, a 100 watt light bulb used for 10 hours equals one kilowatt-hour.

Electric Power Cost Adjustment (PCA)

Also factoring into our customers' monthly rate is the Electric Power Cost Adjustment. Sometimes called a Fuel Adjustment Charge with other electric utilities, the PCA is a variable energy rate that can fluctuate from month to month as Danville Utilities' fuel and purchased power costs rise and fall as wholesale power costs change.

The total amount of what each customer is charged for electric consumption accounts for the base rate plus the PCA. The monthly PCA amount is located in the Billing Factors section on each billing cycle's utility bill.